Margam Castle and Country Park are located on the east side of Swansea Bay (nprns 19291 & 19295), in a parkland landscape with medieval origins (700179). The gardens lie mainly to the west of the house, in an elongated strip of ground from the house to just west of the orangery (37606) where it widens out. The ground falls away west from the house, levelling out before reaching the remains of the abbey (132). The gardens have a long history and have undergone several transformations. It is likely that utilitarian gardens and orchards were attached to the twelth-century Cistercian monastery, but the first mention of gardens is in 1661 with records of a gardener and the building of various garden walls. But by the 1870s the gardens were notable enough, for its fine collection of trees and shrubs, to be written about in gardening journals.
The gardens fall into three main areas: the terrace around the house, the sloping ground to the west, and the level ground around the abbey ruins and orangery.
The terrace is heavily and ornately built, revetted with stone, forming an L-shape around south and west fronts of the house, laid out with square flowerbeds (a restored nineteeth-century pattern), each flanked with narrow strips of lawn. Gravel paths run along the sides of each terrace.
The sloping ground to the west is mostly grassed, laid out informally and planted with a mixture of specimen trees and shrubs, with pines, oaks and rhododendrons dominating. The area is bounded on the north and south sides by stone revetment walls. A wide central walk (the Great Walk) runs up the slope to form a grand, axial approach to the house, which rears up beyond flights of steps at the top of the walk. Along its north side are the remains of a water garden consisting of a rill, channelled and piped into various pools.
The third area is the flat ground to the west of the slope, lying south-west of the fishpond. This is dominated by the eighteenth-century orangery (37606), the dramatic centrepiece to the gardens, and by the remains of Margam Abbey on its north side (132) with the restored medieval church beyond (302498). Around them are informal grounds laid out mainly to lawn and planted with specimen trees and shrubs, and with gravel paths. A path runs past the orangery to circle the west end of the garden. The garden is bounded on the south by a wall and a ha-ha. At the west end of the garden is a pointed arch door (now blocked) in the boundary wall. In the south-west corner garden is Park House, a late nineteenth-century house built for the head gardener.
The west end of the garden is an open, wooded area.
Other gardens on the estate are the nearby kitchen garden (37605) and Twyn-yr-hydd (700180) in the south corner of the park.
Sources:
Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Glamorgan, 102-113 (ref: PGW(Gm)52(NEP)).
Ordnance Survey Second Edition 25-inch map, sheet: Glamorgan XXXIII.7 (1897).
Additional notes: D.K.Leighton
RCAHMW, 19 May 2022